


The Cure

by Frumpologist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Bodily Disfigurement, F/M, Post-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-08
Updated: 2020-07-08
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:15:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23028418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frumpologist/pseuds/Frumpologist
Summary: Draco finds the cure to Astoria’s blood malediction, but it comes at a price.
Relationships: Astoria Greengrass/Draco Malfoy
Comments: 16
Kudos: 60
Collections: Transfiguration: 2020 Round One





	The Cure

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [DBQ2020Round1](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/DBQ2020Round1) collection. 



> The theme for this round of the competition was Transfiguration and my chosen pairing was Draco Malfoy/Astoria Greengrass.
> 
> Thank you to Pronunciation_Hermy_One for listening to me blast off about wanting to write a problematic story. And then for beta reading it, too <3

There’s a vial crushed in Draco’s palm as he appears with a loud _crack_ inside their bedchamber. The room smells of wood and blood curses, earth and rust. It’s lit by torchlight, has been ever since his darling wife had permanently charmed the curtains closed. Sunlight aggravates her condition. She’s pale and weak even in the darkness.

They haven’t slept in the same room since her malediction began presenting. Some nights, she’d vomit all over the bed, and on other nights she’d been so restless that Draco refused sleep. In the end, she had forced him into another bedchamber in the same wing of the manor, so that he was close, but far enough away to sleep. Astoria’s orders; she didn’t want him to see her sick, and was convinced that it would ruin any possible intimacy they would have once she was better.

Years passed and ‘getting better’ has never happened. Though she's gotten worse, she’s still beautiful.

Draco is pale as he stares at her from across the room. He shucks off his cloak and tosses it to a nearby chair, before loosening his tie. “You look well tonight,” he says as he surveys her—no blood, no vomit, no sweat; she must be having a good night. 

Astoria is sitting up, which doesn’t happen often these days. Her blonde hair is tucked into a neat ponytail high on her head and she’s swaddled in a sea foam-colored duvet. Draco hates that duvet, but for her, he’ll suffer it for an eternity. He may not have that long left with her—unless the liquid that rests inside of the little vial does its job. Then, maybe, he can have a lifetime, at least.

“Your energy is very off putting,” she says as her lips raise briefly. She coughs and grimaces, wrapping her arms around her midsection.

Draco rushes to her, panic forcing his muscles to move him forward even though all he wants to do is run—run away and not face losing the one person who had offered him unconditional forgiveness for his childhood crimes. And yet, despite his every inclination to disappear, he sits upon the bed beside her and takes her hand in his, depositing the vial in her delicate palm.

“What’s this?” Her perfect, manicured eyebrows draw together as she inspects it. She rolls it between her fingers and pops the cork to sniff its contents, face screwing up at the rancid smell. “It’s hideous.”

Swallowing around a dry patch in his throat, Draco nods. He can hardly look her in the eyes. This potion, this beautiful, disgusting potion, it’s everything they’ve been looking for. Yet, it's not without a price. He can’t possibly tell her the cost of such a potion; she’d refuse him, refuse the rest of her life and succumb to the vile malediction of her blood.

“It will work." His voice is low, but desperate. Astoria doesn’t miss the flicker of hope in his tone; her eyes snap to his, wider than before, and she trembles. “I have the guarantee, signed in blood. It will work.”

“You’re hiding something from me.” She knows, even if she doesn’t understand _what_ she knows; he’s lying to her by omission. Astoria’s never been a dumb girl with nice looks. She could have been a Ravenclaw if her parents wouldn’t have disowned her. And, she'd always known Draco better than anyone else. “What is it, Draco?”

“Nothing.” He schools his face, not allowing her to see the worry that’s causing a riot of acid to slosh around in his stomach. “I promise you, it’s nothing. You should take it now and rest.”

She doesn’t look convinced but presses the vial to her lips anyway and swallows it down despite the revulsion that flickers in her eyes. Draco pulls the vial from her hand and slips it into his pocket to destroy later. Nothing happens immediately and it settles his nerves enough to leave her. Astoria's always been too trusting of him, and he's never taken advantage of it—until now.

He kisses her forehead, lifts the duvet around her shoulders, and tucks her in to sleep for the night. “I’ll take Scorpius out for a walk on the grounds. We’ll come to see you in the morning.”

“Draco?” Astoria calls after him just as he’s about to walk through the door. He pauses, hand clenching around the burnished bronze knob, and turns back to face her. “Was it expensive? The cure?”

His throat constricts and his heart hammers against his rib cage. “Painfully so,” he whispers, ducking his chin quickly and fleeing the room without allowing her to interrogate him further.

Astoria had never been his first choice for a wife. He wanted his betrothed to bring more to the marriage than vapid vanity; the rumor about the Greengrass girls had always been that their beauty would buy them the best marriage contract—no one ever spoke of their brains. It had been a pleasant shock to Draco when, on their very first supervised date, Astoria had outwitted him in a spontaneous contest of verbal sparring. Their second date had been unsupervised, and that had been the night he fell in love. Her tiny hands had cupped her breasts as she ignored all of his desires and sought her own orgasm.

Throughout the year they courted, Draco had been constantly caught by surprise. Astoria was beautiful, but her tongue was sharp and her mind was quick. He had fallen in love with her hard and it hadn't come as a shock to anyone when Draco dropped to one knee and propose. Still, many of the Sacred Twenty-Eight who had been present whispered snide comments about how much better the Greengrasses could do than lying in bed with the Malfoys.

Draco never agreed—not until now.

After settling Scorpius in bed, Draco sits just outside her bedchamber door with his head tipped back and his hands curled together on his lap, he wonders if she’ll ever be able to forgive him. The old crone in Knockturn Alley who had sold him the cure had promised that she’d survive the malediction, despite years of St. Mungo’s warning them otherwise. But the cost—Astoria would never willingly pay it.

It hadn’t been galleons. No, parting with his gold would have been easy. The Malfoys were disgustingly wealthy. What it cost him in gold was the mere tip of their financial iceberg. The price for Astoria’s life, though? It’s something even she’d be unwilling to give. Not Draco, though. He'd raze the world if it meant she'd live, even if it meant she'd never forgive him.

He stays outside her door until sunrise, when Mipsy the elf taps him on the cheek and chastises him for poor posture and snoring. Draco swats the little beast away and stands, knees popping as they stretch out. He’s getting older, and perhaps that’s what is scariest when facing the rest of his life without Astoria. He’s equal parts desperate for the cure to work, and horrified by the thought of Astoria’s reaction. Doesn’t take long for the latter—her screams are so loud that there’s no doubt in his mind she’s woken every elf and portrait in the manor.

Draco steadies himself with a deep breath and steels his face into an impossible, emotionless mask. He walks into the room to find Astoria sitting up in bed, the duvet twisted and thrown to her feet. Her hands scour the length of her body, from thigh to cheek and the sounds of her screams echo through the room again. Draco winces as he approaches, a false calm settled into his features. He’d known, expected, and it’s now his duty to make her see reason.

Her life, for _this_. This is the price.

He sits at her bedside and pulls her hands from her face. “Tori—”

“Don’t!” Astoria rips her hands from his and covers her face again. She cries into her palms, inconsolable sobs ripping from her chest. “You knew. You _knew_ and you lied—to—me!”

“I had to,” Draco says, gathering her hands back into his. He tries to keep his tone calm, and not react to the sight before him. He swallows, throat like sand that’s been set on fire, and drops his gaze to a ripple in her silk nightgown. “You wouldn’t have taken the potion otherwise.”

“Of course I wouldn’t have!” Her shrill voice slices straight through his composure, and then she eviscerates him with another shriek as she gestures to her face. “Look at what you’ve done to me!”

Draco can hardly lift his eyes to look. He doesn’t want to see what he’s done.

All of his focus goes to trying not to react to the changes. Her cheeks are pale and wide, the left bulging out as if swollen, and her chin is smaller than before, her hair has fallen out in tufts around her shoulders and onto the pillows, and it’s greying and thin. Those kissable lips that he’d once paid so much attention are now dry, cracked and blood red. Astoria’s beautiful once-blue eyes are now odd; one black as onyx and the other pure white. Her body is covered in pink and silvery scarring as if she’d walked through fiendfyre and survived the grueling recovery.

Draco’s thumb caresses the back of her hand, ignoring the knots in her knuckles and the rough, calloused skin. “You’re still beautiful to me, Tori.”

Her voice is a whisper, pained and hoarse. “Take it back.” She cries, a wet sob escaping the back of her throat as she rips her hands from him again. “Change me back—make me pretty again. Please, Draco, _please_.”

Draco lowers his head. “I’m sorry, but it’s impossible.”

“It’s not!” Astoria’s swollen fists ram into the soft mattress. “It can’t be.”

He runs a hand through his hair and keeps his eyes focused on a small scuff on the dark hardwood floor. “Gamp’s fourth exception to the laws of transfiguration,” he says, wincing at the sheer dejection in his own voice. “Cannot transfigure something that’s already been transfigured.”

“Don’t educate me in transfiguration, Draco Malfoy. I was top of my class.” Her voice slams into him like razors, cutting through to his soul. “You’ve traded one malediction for another, without my permission or consent.”

“I chose _you_ , Tori.” Draco turns to her—finally—and he’s fucking angry that she has the audacity to believe he’d ever choose her beauty over her life. “I chose you when I knew you wouldn’t.”

Astoria laughs, but there’s no humor to be found in the sound. “How _could_ you? How could you turn me into _this_ ?” She swats him with her disfigured hands, harder and harder with every swing until he jumps from the bed and out of her reach. “I would rather _die_ than live this life.”

“You would leave our son without his mother?” His voice raises. “You would make a widower out of me now, when we still have so much life left to live with one another?”

“Don’t fool yourself,” she says under her breath, eyes narrowed at him from beneath a brow that’s too large for her face. “We have no life together anymore.”

Astoria settles herself in the bed and turns her whole body away from him. For a moment, Draco tries to get her to see reason, to keep talking to him, to make her want to stay in this life with him, but she ignores every attempt. With his head bowed, he leaves the room and orders a house elf to remain at her side—he’s not sure what she’s capable of right now.

Draco tries every single day to talk to her, but she remains in her dark bedchamber, facing the wall opposite the door. Mipsy has told him that she’ll bathe in her en suite, and change her clothes, and play cards with her, but that she still refuses to see him or Scorpius. Despite that her blood curse is cured, and that he has saved her life, Astoria would rather be dead than cured if the price is her beauty. She hates him, Mipsy says as she cowers away, but Draco merely sighs and tries again the next day.

The night she yells at Draco and demands for him to announce her death to the wizarding world, Draco is relieved that she's finally acknowledged him. His guilt is subsiding, and he's starting to feel a glimmer of hope that she'll leave the bedchamber one day. He spends hours at the desk in his study, penning a letter to a contact at _The Daily Prophet_.

Several days later, Draco enters her bedchamber with a tray of assorted pastries, juice, and _The_ _Daily_ _Prophet_. As he sets it beside her, Draco tries again to engage her in conversation, but Astoria ignores him. She’s gotten too good at it.

“I think there’s an article in the Prophet that will interest you." He shoves the paper toward Astoria despite her refusal to acknowledge his presence. “It says ‘Astoria Malfoy’s wake to be held today at Wiltshire Manor’.”

Draco can see the war on her face; the way she breezes through the visible part of the article and then slowly raises her eyes to his for the first time in far, far too long. His jaw twitches as he holds back all of the words he wants to say.

“Get. Out.” She flips the tray over onto the bed, soiling the freshly cleaned linens. Draco starts, but she shrieks at him as her bulbous fingers curl around a teacup and crushes it in her hand. “Get the hell out, Draco Malfoy, or so help me Merlin, I will kill you.”

Astoria throws the crumbled porcelain at Draco, and he turns for the door. A thick pastry smacks him in the back of the head, and as he quickly escapes through the door, he can hear the sound of something crashing against it and shattering into pieces at the floor.

Draco rests himself against the door and brings his hands up to the Windsor knot at his throat. As desperate as he is to loosen it, instead he tightens it further and clears his throat to remove any of the lingering emotion that had settled there. With a steadying breath, he pushes himself away from the door and walks slowly towards the drawing room where all of his guests have begun to gather.

The room is filled with friends and acquaintances, the media, and several of his business associates. Draco makes his way over to familiar faces; Blaise, Theo, and Pansy greet him with utmost sympathy, squeezing his arm in solidarity—who better to understand the mortality of blood curses than a bunch of Sacred Twenty-Eight heirs? He plays the part of a widowed father; frowning where appropriate, holding onto Scorpius a little too tight before handing him off to his mother’s affectionate arms.

He makes his way towards a tray with drinks that’s floating around the room, and pauses in his step as he spots a large, gilded frame in the corner of the room. Held within it is the most breathtaking portrait of his wife that he’s ever seen. She’s tall and lean with long blonde hair and the clearest, blue eyes he’s ever seen, and they positively sparkle as her pink lips raise in a gracious smile. She’s draped in an emerald dress and wearing the Malfoy jewels around her throat. Their eyes meet and his heart stutters. His wife, the most gorgeous creature he’s ever laid eyes on, now hates him for what he’s taken away from her.

And somehow, Draco loves her harder despite what the cure has done to her.

As he turns from the portrait, he catches movement out of the corner of his eye. A veiled guest enters the room, draped in black robes. There’s no visible skin, no way to tell who she is, but Draco knows; he’d know those graceful movements anywhere. She’s come to say goodbye to the life she’s always known.

He regrets nothing.


End file.
